Australia Cheap Flight From Humberside Sydney Sources of australia cheap flight from humberside sydney information from the Web

The Australian aborigines , estimated to number as many as 350,000 at the time of the Europeans' arrival, was numbered at 386,049 (including Torres Strait Islanders, who are of Papuan descent) in 1996. Although still more rural than the general population, the aboriginal population has become more urbanized, with some two thirds living in cities. New South Wales and Queensland account for just over half of the Australian aboriginal population. In Tasmania the aboriginal population was virtually wiped out in the 19th century.

Most of the Australian population descends from 19th and 20th century immigrants, most from the UK and Ireland to begin with, but from other sources in later years. Although the Australian colonies were founded as a penal colonies (except for South Australia and Western Australia - with the latter later receiving convicts), the transportation of British convicts to Australian colonies was gradually phased out between 1840 and 1868. During the "gold rush" of the late 19th century, the convicts and their descendants were rapidly overshadowed by hundreds of thousands of free settlers from many different countries: for example, in the 1850s about two per cent of the combined populations of Britain and Ireland emigrated to New South Wales and Victoria.

The first English explorers were Willem Dampier on the west coast of the continent in 1688, and Lieutenant James Cook who, in 1770, claimed the eastern two-thirds of the continent for Britain, despite orders from King George III to first conclude a treaty with the indigenous population. His report to London that Australia was uninhabited (see Terra nullius) provided impetus for the establishment of a penal colony there following the loss of the American colonies.

Australia has about 800 species of bird, ranging from the tiny 8 cm Weebill to the huge, flightless Emu.

Darwin is the capital of the Northern Territory, and is a city of 109,419 people (2001 census) on Australia's far north-western coastline. Darwin is reputed to suffer more lightning-strikes than any other inhabited place in the world. It is also home to the Territory's only university, Charles Darwin University.

While Australia has ubiquitous media coverage, the longest established part of that media is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the Federal Government funded organisation offering national TV and radio coverage. The ABC, like the BBC in Britain, is a non-commercial public service broadcaster, showing many BBC or ITV productions from Britain.

Australia's neighbouring countries include New Zealand to the southeast and Indonesia, East Timor, and Papua New Guinea to the north. The shortest border distance is between the mainlands of Papua New Guinea and Australia at about 150 km; however, the nearest inhabited island, Boigu Island, is about 5km from Papua New Guinea. This has led to a complicated border arrangement allowing access for 'traditional' uses of the waterway across the border by Papua New Guinean people and Torres Strait Islanders.

The sharing of animal and plant species between adjacent parts of Australia, Papua New Guinea, and Papua and nearby Indonesian islands point to early land bridges closed when sea levels rose. The historically traditional movement of people between these places in primitive sailing craft for trade and fishing, point to the possibility of Arab and Chinese traders to the northern islands learning of and then visiting the shores of the southern continent from as early as the 9th century. Maps compiled in Europe from the late 1400s show parts of the coastline.